Level Designing of a different kind

[Crane]

So as some of you know, I don't just make custom levels for Lemmings! Here's me talking about a level I made for Doom II.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D48lB7xivXM (I tend to go by the name "Curious Kit" these days)

I'm curious to know, does anyone here design for games outside of Lemmings, or maybe go a step further and make their own games?

[ccexplore]

Well as you may or may not be aware, namida had worked on and relatively recently completed this RGP game called "Legends of an Otherworld".   He used RGPMaker to do so, and a few people here had provided much valuable feedback and bug reports during its development.  Check it out if you're interested in that kind of game!

(Granted, for that particular game there is no custom level design available.  It's just about namida making his own game.)

[Nessy]

Really cool level Crane I really like the aesthetics of the map and the non-linear layout, and it has a good balance of enemies throughout. I especially liked how the final boss was handled. I like the idea of the darkening hallways to create a feeling of tension to an already terrifying demon

For me personally I haven't done much outside of custom Lemmings levels. The only thing I have done were some levels in Super Mario Maker. I'm actually in the process of exploring custom content for other stuff for more creative outlet variety. And who knows? Maybe some time in the future I will have my own game.

I know that Colorful Arty is working on a Lemmings-like game for his senior project called Tech Mechs. You should definitely check it out.

[Ryemanni]

Nice level indeed. I've made a couple of doom maps myself, but that was a long time ago. I don't even know if I have them lying around anymore.

I've always been captivated by level editors in games, which has also caused me to start making my own games. I'm always working on some personal project during my free time. Right now I'm practicing the use of unity with a 2D platformer.

[Proxima]

Ooh, nice topic!

I've always been just as keen on designing levels as playing them, ever since I started with Repton 3 for the BBC Micro when I was 4. I still make levels for the Repton series; here's an example of one of mine (with my own walkthrough).

After we got our first Mac when I was around 9 (the same age I started playing Lemmings), I discovered my second major outlet for the level-designing urge: Spacestation Pheta, a mostly forgotten grid-based platformer with a mixture of execution and puzzle elements. As with Repton, I made a huge number of mediocre levels in the early years, but much later, I designed a 100-level set, "Daedalus's Revenge", limiting myself to only the basic game elements and introducing a new element every 20 levels, and building the most complex mazes and logical puzzles I could with that limitation. I still have one of our Macs, and I really hope that one day I'll be able to get it up and running again so that I can save those levels in some form....

Over the next few years, the inclusion of a level editor was one of my main criteria when choosing games, so there were a lot of games I designed a handful of levels for, and I won't try to list them all. My levelset "House of Fun" for Bub and Bob (a Mac-based Bubble Bobble clone) was notable in that I made graphics as well as levels; this is where some of the tiles from my Lix tileset originated.

I'd attempted making my own games since the BBC Micro years, but my first completed games were done in my teens, using HyperCard. I made a Repton-like game, a simplistic RPG, and Hubris, a clone of the puzzle mode of Tetris Attack with my own puzzles. (A few years ago, there was a thread on this forum where Insane Steve helped me import these levels into Tetris Attack and then solved them.)

Then we come to the years when I discovered this forum, Cheapo, and so forth. You know about all that

In 2007, I discovered the Deadly Rooms of Death series of games, a turn-based dungeon crawler in which each monster has its own predictable movement pattern, and while many rooms are pure hack-and-slash, there is a vast puzzle space to explore based around monster manipulation (sometimes with only one monster per room, or even none, as there are other deadly elements, and a "conquer token" forces you to reach a specific tile for the room to count as cleared). I found the games unapproachably hard at first (not helped by the fact that I joined right before The City Beneath came out), but with the release of entry-level Gunthro and the Epic Blunder in 2012, I got back into the games, and it's been my primary gaming passion ever since then.

Sadly, it's taken me a very long time to build up enough confidence at DROD architecture to attempt a hold. I released "Castle Repton" (with level layouts based on those of Repton 3) in 2016 for the spinoff DROD RPG, and I have a second RPG hold, "Tetrahedron", complete except for some level intro screen texts. The release of The Second Sky in 2014 inspired me to start a hold using some TSS elements aimed at novice players, which I called "Bubble Wrap" since it was originally going to use roaches as its only monsters (my friend Jonathan commented that holding down a direction to blaze through a line of roaches reminded him of popping bubble wrap). Then a group of us decided to make a massive collaborative hold, eventually titled "The Descent of King Hesper", and "Bubble Wrap" got sidelined. Well, "King Hesper" is now around 90% complete and I really hope it will be finished this year, and I certainly intend to go back to "Bubble Wrap" when I can, even though the community buzz caused by the release of TSS is long since over.

I've also started a project, School of Adventure, in RPG Maker, but continuing that is a pretty low priority at the moment.

[nin10doadict]

I'm currently working on a remake of Blockdude (a game for TI-84 and TI-89 graphing calculators) in Game Maker. I actually created a remake of it many years ago, but the coding was rather shoddy and the result was a bit glitchy. I've recently revamped it and am in the middle of coding the second boss fight.

[grams88]

That deadly rooms of death looks quite a nice game, I might maybe give that a try one time. You guys play the cool games, I ordered a game for my brothers christmas which was the Rhem trilogy which was something I think I remember mobius talking about. A sort of point and click game similar to the myst games.

Interesting topic. I've made a few levels for a couple of different games, some were small ones like the ones I done for the track mania game. I did make a duke3d map which was quite fun. It was a level with lots of bad guys and you had to use pipe bombs to blow up the trees to get past a certain bit. Maybe it was more of a rushed project but it actually turned out not too bad, not as good as the newer duke maps out at the moment but nevertheless still fun. I might think about making another duke3d map in the future but see what happens.

Nice level you have there of Doom II Crane.

[mobius]

I've made a 166 levelpack for Chips challenge 2 (available on steam). That's really the only other game besides Lemmings I've been so involved in modding.

http://cczone.invisionzone.com/topic/1265-mobis-challenge/

I'm currently working on a remake of Blockdude (a game for TI-84 and TI-89 graphing calculators) in Game Maker. I actually created a remake of it many years ago, but the coding was rather shoddy and the result was a bit glitchy. I've recently revamped it and am in the middle of coding the second boss fight.

boss fight? sounds interesting

That deadly rooms of death looks quite a nice game, I might maybe give that a try one time. You guys play the cool games, I ordered a game for my brothers christmas which was the Rhem trilogy which was something I think I remember mobius talking about. A sort of point and click game similar to the myst games.

yes; I really enjoyed the Rhem games; but they are very hard, tough puzzles. Very niche games, not for everybody.

[kieranmillar]

Sweet Doom level Crane. I tried making Doom levels too but beyond a small number of maps in Hadephobia I have little to show for it, I think action games do not suit me as well.

For me I have dabbled in numerous editors over the years, but my primary works are an old DOS indie game called Ducks that is Lemmings-esque, The Incredible Machine 2, making maps for Worms Armageddon, and DROD and DROD RPG.

When younger I tried to make my own games in Game Maker and also a point and click adventure game, but they were all terrible because I was a child.

[namida]

I've made levels for Ducks and Commander Keen in the past, but I wouldn't exactly think they're very high on the quality scale, given what my Lemmings levels from back in those days were like. I don't think any of them are still available anywhere.

[grams88]

It sounds like you are a commander keen fan Namida. I've never played any of them before but I plan to one day.

[Crane]

It sounds like you are a commander keen fan Namida. I've never played any of them before but I plan to one day.

Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy, specifically Episode IV: Secret of the Oracle (the shareware episode) is one of my favourite games of all time. It's very much designed as a children's game, but it is legitimately difficult on Hard, and is pretty darn enjoyable if you ask me.

Never found the level editors for it though. I did find a level editor for the original Duke Nukem platformer, but that series doesn't have the same finesse as Commander Keen.

[namida]

It took a long time before there was any Keen 4-6 editors, but there are these days.

[Ryemanni]

I'm a huge Commander Keen enthusiast myself. Nice to see I'm not the only one here.

[Akseli]

Commander Keen is my second favourite DOS game series, also the only one in addition to Lemmings whose user made content I've really played. Unofficial The Universe is Toast trilogy is somewhat well-known even outside Keen community, and especially its last episode is phenomenal. To date maybe the biggest and most awaited mod has been Atroxian Realm, which I played a year ago, and I myself rated it the best game I've played in years. Commander Keen obviously is highly suggested if you're into old school jump and run games, and those mods are highly suggested if you love Commander Keen.